If you are getting harassed, or just annoyed by another user you can still mute them. That takes their posts off your feed entirely.
The feature they are removing is one that was routinely abused. Someone spreads misinformation, or says something dumb, and gets called out on it. They say "source?" And block the user calling them out, and now that person can't respond and be seen by anyone in that thread. The audience thinks they just abandoned the conversation.
Block was there to help liars and the stubbornly misinformed censor other people, it's good that it's gone. It's worth noting that now X/Twitter works the same way Lemmy does. Lemmy never had a block feature the way X used to.
I really don’t think stalking victims would agree it’s good “block” has gone. I understand how it was being abused - it’s frustrating and annoying but not being able to completely block someone on social media is more than that, it can be real-world dangerous. Think domestic violence, custody disputes, abusive parents etc. Social media can be invaluable for at-risk people, but not if they can’t block the people putting them at risk.
Personally, I consider lemmy and Reddit to be different from Facebook, Twitter and other social media. You generally don’t know any redditors/lemmings irl and in an anonymous forum it’s much easier to stay truly anonymous. On Facebook and I think soon on Twitter, you’re meant to use your real name and in some cases show government ID.
So no, I’m not mad at Lemmy developers, I’m not mad at anyone at the moment. But as someone who was stalked (thankfully before social media existed) I am concerned for other victims, particularly as Twitter doesn’t have moderators anymore. Even if they reinstated them, moderators can slow to act on such a large platform and they only enforce the rules of the platform - someone just reading your posts isn’t breaking any rules, yet they could be using that information to cause you a real-world harm. That’s why I think the block feature needs to exist, but it just my opinion. We can have different opinions without arguing.
Neither of our instances let you block users like Twitter used to. Are you going to complain to your admin?
If you think it's dangerous when Elon does it, but perfectly fine when your admin does it, then it doesn't sound like it the actual feature that matters.